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Shrimp Salad

A chilled gelatin-based shrimp salad with capers, lemon juice, broth, peas, and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in the hot broth.

Line the mold

  1. Cut the truffles into thin slices and line a fish mold with them.

  2. Let the mold stand in ice water.

  3. Dip the truffles in the cool gelatine broth and set them in place.

  4. Split some of the shrimps and use them to line the mold.

Fill and serve

  1. Pour the gelatine over all the ingredients and mold.

  2. Use the peas as a garnish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shrimp + meattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Capers + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the broth into a firm jelly that holds the salad together.
Meat broth
Forms the liquid base that becomes the savoury jelly once set.
Shrimps
Provides the seafood flavour and the main substance of the salad.
Truffles
Adds an earthy aroma and a decorative pattern on the mold surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and seafood.
Capers
Adds a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich jelly.

The step that matters

Pouring the gelatine over the ingredients. The gelatine must be cool but still fluid. If it is too hot, it melts the set truffles and shrimp layers; if it is too cold, it sets before it fills the mold.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, capers, meat, truffle, peas):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, capers, meat, truffle, peas. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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